ShawnVW

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- The text in the Nav window changes, for instance from "Locate the Boss" to "Defeat the Boss" in the midst of a mission.

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I should have been more specific. I want the change to occur when the first fight begins, or at least when the first fight ends. The idea is that you think this is going to be a non-combat mission (yeah, right) until the shooting starts. Can that be done?

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...cool story writing...regardless of what the players do...regardless of what the players do...appropriate whether you failed or completed the previous mission.

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I've seen things like this.

They were called "movies". Generally, I like games to at least pretend to let me have an impact on the outcome.

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Aw, come on. You've never played a game that had cutscenes?

This story is about rescuing your ally. Wouldn't it be more interesting to see the abduction than to just have it happen "offscreen" and read about it in the text windows?

Okay, maybe you disagree. Then tell me: if I set up the mission so the ally may or may not be defeated ("kidnapped"), how do I write the next mission? If you had saved the ally she should be there by your side fighting the boss. But if you hadn't saved her, she should be a captive needing to be rescued. And of course the dialogue will be different.

Your thoughts?

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...it could be perceived as a way of getting around having to produce new content all the while getting paid to have paying subscribers to do it for you.

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To those who believe this is true (not you, Duff): Positron has said that in the 24 hours after MA went live, the community posted more missions than the Devs did in 5 years. Granted, some of that had been created on the Test server, and some was "practice" and not to be taken seriously, but if you look at the number of missions that have been created since then, and assuming that 1 in 100 could be considered professional quality, we can still say that we're outproducing the devs.

In other words, they'd have to hire thousands of people to equal our output. Even if that was practical -- isn't this better?

Besides, we get to make characters and missions without having to compete for the paying jobs, and then having to move to northern California if we get it. And remember, it's only work if someone makes you do it.

I'm trying to do some cool story writing and need to see some examples. Can you point me to any arcs in which:

- An NPC who appears in one mission is abducted between that and the next mission.
- An NPC is defeated by the enemies on-screen, regardless of what the players do.
- An enemy NPC escapes, regardless of what the players do.
- The text in the Nav window changes, for instance from "Locate the Boss" to "Defeat the Boss" in the midst of a mission
- A good example of mission text that is appropriate whether you failed or completed the previous mission.

Thanks!

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I've had this same issue occur to me. There are some mobs, for some factions, that simply do NOT give you the option to assign them an animation if you're inserting them as an ally.

Just a few examples from personal experience:
Abominations
Dr. Vahzilok
Red Cap Fiends


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And the OP's problem is with Clockwork, right?

a-HA!

What do all these enemies have in common? They don't use regular human being models! Their animations in the regular game are unique to the, right? Only the Vahz, for instance, walk with their arms swinging side-to-side.

Customized animations for non-standard character types is a lot of work for the devs; they've said so on these forums. That must have something to do with it.

Hope this isnt' too late: "$name" doesn't always work the way you want. Something about the distance to the speaker. Anyway, I suggest using "$target" instead.

PS: Birthday present, huh? I did a mission that was a surprise party for someone in my player group. It even had a talking pinata. Let me know if you want to see it.

I want to have a fight between the police, an ally, a boss, and the players, in a Paragon Police station. Unfortunately the police station map doesn't have enough spawn points.

Are there other maps I could use? It has to be some place where police would be congregated, but not too large. Can we use a map from a safeguard mission, where there are police barricades and such?

Submitted for your approval:

Arc Name: Whitehawks
Arc ID: 113811
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @ShawnVW
Difficulty Level: Medium-High
Synopsis: Who has hired the Whitehawk commandos? And why must you rescue a gang member from them?

Whitehawks: The Poster

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If you HAVE to have an outdoor map with a non glowing and humming search objective, make that objective obviously visible somehow. Using the various magical capture emotes could be a good way.

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You know what else really stands out? Brightly colored costumes. Have you ever flown over an outdoor map of Carnies? It's like one of my old first-grade picture books.

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And for the love of all that's holy, vary up your custom mobs. I know file space is limited. But even set on Standard, a lot of powersets become problematic when every minion has it.

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This is how I use Ninjitsu: of the 9 types of mobs in my custom group, only one has it. (They're snipers, so it fits). This helps make the group tough, but not overly so.

Instead of triggering the battle when the boss is defeated, trigger it when he's at 3/4 health (or 1/2 or 1/4. These are all valid options). Hopefully the boss will be too busy fighting the players to be aggroed by the battle.

I've been writing test (Clues, Sendoffs, Mission Entry dialog, etc) as if all the players on the team can see it. Then my group told me that only the team leader can see all the text, but the other players can see only some of the text. And then they got into a big fight about who could see what.

This is important because the players can't get the whole story if I put important information where they can't see them.

Will you folks please help complete this list? I'll list the items roughly in the order that you encounter them:

WHO CAN READ THE FOLLOWING TEXT:

Story Title & Description: All (by viewing the Mission Chooser window)
Contact's Briefing (Mission title & subtitle, Mission Introduction Dialogue): Team Leader. (However, once inside mission, team members can see this by selecting "Mission" in the Navigation Window)
Mission Accept Text: Team Leader
Mission Sendoff Dialogue (from Contact):

Mission Entry Popup: All
Compass Active Task Test: All
Mission Success Popup: All?
Mission Fail Popup:
Return Success Dialogue (Contact's Debriefing):
Return Fail Dialogue (Contact's Debriefing):
Still Busy Dialogue: All?

Mission Completed Clue Name & Description:
Souvenir Name & Description:

I'm editing a mission, and want to add a custom character from my list of custom groups. However, the custom group I created most recently doesn't appear in any of the Custom choosers. What could be causing that?

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What I want to do is simply have a few random hostages spawn and the nav window to say "Rescue X hostages".

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Did you know that there are ordinary Civiilians you can use as NPCs? They're in the "Civilians" standard group and include all those folks you see walking around Paragon, plus scientists and others like that. Using existing characters makes your storyarc files much smaller.

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If you treat the one you want to be abducted, or flee, etc like a captive you can pseudo accomplish this.
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If you pick the right character model, set up the right animations to make it look like they're cheering their buddies on while they fight, and then curse your existence as they are "rescued" and then run away, or something like that, it should accomplish what you're looking for.

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Sorry, I don't get what you're getting at. How do I treat the character as a captive?

Also, was I clear that I wanted the villain to abduct a third party?

Is there any way to have allies (especially robots) suddenly change sides due to the actions of an enemy?

My first thought is to give the enemy Confusion or a similar power. It kind of works, but a) there are a lot of powers in that set, so it only uses Confusion sparingly, and b) robots are resistant to Confusion.

Is there a way to fake it? What if fighting the boss triggers an ambush of enemies who are identical to the patrolling allies? If the patrol was still out of sight elsewhere on the map, would it look like the ambush was actually the same group?

Is there any way to show -- or suggest -- a character being abducted? I'd really like to see a character vanish, but normally that only happens if he's been defeated. I could have a "defendible object" represent the character -- for instance, he could be trapped in a body bag or a crate -- but when the enemies attack it and destroy it, it doesn't look like a kidnapping.

Any ideas?

Whenever I have an Ally surrounded by enemies, and I defeat the enemies at range, the Ally doesn't move or do his "rescue" dialog until I walk next to him. However, events that are triggered by the Ally being "completed" do activate as soon as the enemies are dead.

Actually, the same thing happens when the Ally is spawned with no enemies around him: he won't move until I approach him. Usually I want them to begin "active".

Is this a bug? Is there a way to get the Ally to move as soon as he's freed?

BTW: Maybe having the spawned allies be Patrols or Ambushes instead would do the trick, but they tend to wander around, and I want the allies to Follow the player

Actually, I know you can have Defendables spawn after another event (I did it myself), and I'm sure that's true of Destructibles

You want:
- Collectible Object (the safe)
- First Ambush
- Defendable Object (generator)
- Second Ambush (triggered by generator)
* either the First Ambush or the Generator, but not both, can be triggered by completing the Safe

After you've placed these, look at the description of the map you've chosen. It will tell you how many "special spawns" you can have (patrols, ambushes, etc.) You've already used up some of those spawn points; now add enough patrols (or other things) to use up the remaining spawn points.

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The biggest draw-back, and IMHO the single biggest thing that will kill the concept, is the total lack of salvage drops appropriate to the adversaries we face in these new stories.

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I'm fine that collecting salvage is serioulsly important to many people's gameplay. If that's how you roll, great.

But "kill the concept"? Dude. Seriously. I think the 70% of architects who create custom groups are in this to show off. (I know I am.) And I'm sure that the players who play for the brand new content are at least as numerous as those of you who like more tangible rewards.

Besides, can't you spend your tickets on salvage?

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I had an ice/mind dominator to make. I wasn't sure what to use to combine the two, and figured, something cold that works on your brain. Maybe a pain reliever pill. Aspirin sounded lame and Baer did as well. So I headed over to wikipedia and searched for morphine and found multiple prescription drug names to look through. Pethidine just sounded neat and became the name i went with and every time I think about the name I like it more and more.

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Not bad. Besides, "Brainfreeze" was probably already taken.

AE System
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Welcome to Architect Entertainment -- Neutral
Death for Dollars! -- Neutral
Bare Knuckles of Rage (9304)
*

Character/Supergroup Origins
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Birth of a Fossil -- Heroic
Secret Origins(Tech) The Snake Women of Epsilon V (42221) - Heroic
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Classic Super-Hero/Super-Villain
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THE BOMBER --- Heroic --- 16607
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Comedy
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The Extadine Lab -- Heroic
MacGuffin Delivery Service (1567) -- Villainous
ParaCon -- Heroic
The new and improved Lord Recluse Strike Force -- Villainous (though I wouldn't recommend against a hero )
The Fire Bunnies - Neutral, They are only bunnies after all...
You Say It's Your Birthday! (3630) - Neutral
Trademark Infringement -- Heroic (2220)
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Comedy/Drama
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A Super Team is Born -- Heroic
Attack of the Space Clowns (18749) -- Neutral
Cause of How Some Silly Stealed My Wings #1481 -- Neutral
How to Survive a Robot Uprising -- Heroic (12669)
Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare -- Neutral
It's a Nice Day for a White Wedding (9059) -- Neutral
TURG FICTION: Ghost in the Machine, Act I - Heroic (althoughs romantic villains could try this too )
Rum Runners of Bloody Bay (3691) - Heroic
Have a Blap, Blap, Blappy Day Kids! (2019)
*

Crime/Gangs
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The Bravuran Jobs -- Villainous (16809)
The Monstrous Regiment of Lesbian Hellions -- Heroic (27178)
Win the 2009 Freak-Lympics (2150) - Villainous
Ninja Crimewave! (2142) - Heroic
Whitehawks (Arc 49364) -- Heroic
*

Drama
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The Fan Club -- Heroic
*

Global Domination
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Axis and Allies -- Villainous (10597)
*

Heist
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Celebrity Kidnapping -- Villainous (20161)
*

Historical (Realistic)
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*

Historical (CoH Lore)
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The War on Superadine - The Regulators in their 1980's drug war (Heroic) (Arc 7959)
*

Holiday
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*

Horror
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Dark Dreams -- Heroic (18914)
The Amulet of J'gara (1709) -- Heroic
Project: Perilous - Into the Chthonian Pit (#3586) - Neutral (Unless you happen to be a mad cultist, in which case, go nuts!)
Small Fears -- Heroic
*

Large-Scale Crisis
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A Hero's Halo -- Heroic
This Is War, Part I - the Revenge of Hro'Dtohz -- Neutral
Win the Past, Own the Future - Heroic
*

Magic
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The Magical Miss Fitz (5079) -- Heroic
Chains of Blood (5492) -- Heroic
*

Military
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Redoubt Operations #1: Fires over Kalago -- Heroic
Red Storm Rising (Arc 4912) -- Heroic
Whitehawks (Arc 49364) -- Heroic


*
Misc. Adventure
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The Portal Bandits (3326) -- Heroic
*

Mystery
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Blowback (18575) -- Heroic
Dream Paper -- Heroic (13030)
Dream Paper 2: Restless Sleep -- Heroic (16797)
Dream Paper 3: Broken Dreams -- Heroic (13064)
*

Mythology
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Anactoria's Descent Into the Underworld -- Villainous
The War of Fate: Betrayal (19698) -- Neutral
The Seelie War -- Heroic
The Unseelie War -- Villainous
Tales of Cimerora, volume 1 : Of feathers and fur -- Heroic
The Aegis Affair - Heroic
Witches and Warriors (49594)- Heroic
*

Nemesis Plots
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Brass Reaver: Part 1 -- Neutral
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Player-Chosen Outcome
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Hunting the Dark Dragon -- Heroic
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Sci-Fi
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Adventures of the Space Marines -- Neutral
Adventures of the Space Marines 2 -- Neutral
Netrunner -- Heroic (14434)
Above Mars - Part 1: The Wellington -- Neutral (13215)
The Final Nemesis
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Un-themed Survival/AV/Time Challenges
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The Meatgrinder -- Neutral
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[newb question] What all can you change with a respec, anyhow? [/newb question]

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Remember when you first created the character? Right after you chose your powersets? That's where you are when you respec. Your powersets are the same, but you get to "level up" to your current level one step at a time. You can choose your powers and enhancement slots anew.

Oh, but before you start choosing powers, they "unlock" and set aside the enhancements you have slotted. After you've chosen your powers and slots, you can reslot any of your enhancements you want. Any that you don't want, they will buy them back at their full normal price when you're done.

Arc Name: Serafina's Challenge
Arc ID: 12667
Faction: Djinni (Custom)
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Hellbore/shawnvw
Difficulty Level: Average
Synopsis: A simple "Defeat All"
Length: Very Short

This mission is to gain feedback on my custom villain group. I'm building up to a big arc, "War of the Djinn" in which Serafina will play a part.